Tail And Wing
by Alicorn
Summary: Their friends had not found them. Friends always found them... An AU ending to the episode "Marooned" Fraggle Rock/Dark Crystal Red/Boober


Author's note:

This is a story I posted some time ago and have decided to give another chance. I think the idea is a fresh one if nothing else...All worlds, connected...

_"Dance your cares away, worries for another day..."_

--The Ancient Song Of The Fraggle

_"Ghel-lflainngk: Those who live without knowledge of the future."_

-- Unknown source

**Tail And Wing**

_I._

_"Remember when, now and then, everything went wrong...and then our friends would sing the friendship song."_

The air in the small enclosure was thin now.

So thin, it drank up the dim hope that had been the last notes of their song.

Now both the dwindling air with its greedy hunger for life, and the caving ceiling, moved as one.

The two fraggles huddled together instinctively.

Their friends had not found them.

Friends always found them.

But the song had ended.

No hope.

No Gobo or Mokey or even Wembley.

No happy ending.

The boulders fell with a razor nailed hand to paint the cavern floor with scarlet.

And yet...and yet...

It was a small thing that darted quickly, the spot of light hardly bigger than a dustmite.

It caught the edge of Boober's sensitive nose, sending his arms and legs into motion in the same instant.

Air. Light. Life...Sweet life.

His unseen large viscous black eyes sped, mole-like after his keen nose, nearly dislocating Red's shoulder as their last bid for freedom gave his body the strength of three.

It was more of a crack than a hole that his fingers clawed at, wiggling all that followed in a single withheld breath.

Boober turned to pull at both the larger fraggle's arms as her middle with its thick fur was fixed fast within the jaws of stone.

Until, with a deafening scream of fright and pain, Red was sent tumbling forward into a rolling heap with Boober.

The ceiling was the floor other and over again as the moss the covered what felt like stairs cushioned their bouncing path downward, and the music of bone hitting rock send the world into a dance of light and roaring winds.

For once in his life Boober was very glad his name meant "Tie 'em to a rock" as the later part of his namesake made a ringing collision with the back of his skull.

"Oow...Red..Red, are you okay?"

Red got up to her knees with slow and painful jerks, shaking her head to still the spinning world.

The cave they were now in was an strange place, honeycombed with entrances to drank tunnels that seemed to head to a thousand paths just beyond view to one side.

The other side opened to the wide expanse of a hillside where wild golden grasses whipped, leading of to an endless horizon of forest.

But they both saw none of this.

Boober gasped in shock as Red opened her mouth twice as if to speak and instead dissolved into open tears into his scarf.

"Shh...It does'nt matter. It's safe..it's safe..we're alive..."

Boober's small voice repeated over and over, until it grew into a soft sing-song chant that carried off into the caves beyond.

The two odd colored gelflings huddled together for the warmth of each others being on the hillside, the tallers' pastel yellow wings folded like flower pedals in evening.

_II._

The creature had been pounding her fists upon the many honeycombed dead end tunnel walls for the better part of an hour.

Beads of sweat from her frustration were trickling down her cheeks around a short almost dog-like muzzle to mix with the path of long tear stains on her bright yellow skin.

Her two pigtails, once supported upright, now hung limply down to nearly the waist of her odd new body.

Her green skinned companion sat cross-legged a few feet away. The limbs and body of the small human like boy were a reflection of her own in miniature, delicate and almost fragile.

His once higher set gaze could now clearly be seen beneath a mop of unbrushed feathery red feather around a slightly more pronounced muzzle, watching her progress.

When he finally spoke his voice was weighted with a heavy sensibility.

"Red?

" Gobo, Mokey, Wembley.." Red yelled her voice long since hoarse,each name paired with a new pound of her stone cut fingers. " Rumple, Marvin, Lou, Morris ..anyone!

"Red?...Red, if they didn't hear us in the cave in how could they now? We must be very far away…"

Red sighed, letting her balled up fists slide down the wall slowly before flopping to earth to lay in a patch of grass in exhaustion.

"You're right…But…" She glanced over, fixing Boober with an upside down look of amazement. "Shouldn't you be going on and on about how bad things are by now?

Boober shrugged. "It's funny, I feel sort of claim actually…Just glad to be anywhere…Besides…

The small green gelfling got to his feet, tapping on the stones where she had been and pressing his ear to the spot to catch the resounding echo.

"..You seem to be doing enough worrying for the both of us."

Red began to bite down on the edge of her muzzle in frustration, and finding only a hard boned jaw and thin lips, settled instead from chewing on the inside of her cheek.

"And why shouldn't I be worried?! We're trapped again and for some crazy reason we're not even in our own bodies anymore, our own shapes. I don't know about you Boober, but being a fraggle means something to me. Being a fraggle is me…and..and..I miss everyone…"

Boober sat down beside Red as she turned on her side to hide a new attack of tears.

"It meant something to me…and I, I miss them to…"

Red's angry whisper welled up from where she was plucking out tall blades of wild wheat one by one.

"Dirty gorgs, they probably wouldn't recognize us anyway…"

"It is a horrible spell..my poor fur." Boober agreed, eyeing his smooth skinned chest and torso.

Red stopped mid- grass pluck suddenly, her voice an even softer sad whisper.

"Say..Boober…what if this isn't..just a rock spell?"

Boober leaned in with a well traced ear in the language of grim tones.

"What do you mean? Shape rearrangement fits all the proper requirements of a standard…"

Red's voice was so strained now that even her insults sounded half hearted.

"What I mean, dictionary breath, is..What if we really didn't survive that cave in?"

Boober took off his hat, running it's somehow larger inner rim between his figures.

"The cave in? But I dug us out…I think my blisters still have blisters in this form to…"

"But what if this weird place just wants us to think that?"

Red nearly jumped in place hearing a tiny uncommon sound: Boober's laugh..or at least, the beginning of one before he caught it and quickly tucked it away again.

"Red, I appreciate your deep philosophical disillusion brought on by traumatic stress, but my head really hurts and we have our things so we are can't be…"

Red flipped over to fix the little gelfling beside her a dark glare that nearly made him fall back with a yelp.

"Who says dead fraggles can't feel alive and bleed and stuff ? Have any of them ever come back to say so?"

"Well, no." Boober replied, edging away a little.

"Have you ever talked to one to ask if they still had their things?"

"No…" He replied again, edging farther still.

"It's settled then: I say we're dead. Dead and naked without our fur. It makes perfect sense!"

Boober crawled backward a step more, falling with a thump into a shallow hole.

"You know…you're starting to sound a little like me, Red."

Red caught the trim of Boober's scarf to tug him up out of the hole, opening her mouth as if to sting him with a snappy comeback before shutting it just as quickly.

"Oh joy, dead, naked, and sounding like Boober..Great just great…Ack!" She fell over the holes edge herself getting up in a huff "..no balance ether."

"Oh, I forgot, you don't have a tail anymore..neither do I. It's sickening if you ask me…"

"Who asked you to look in the first place?"

"Sorry…" Boober said as they both climbed up to rest at the top again at last. "At least..you do have pretty..wing…things…now."

Red rolled her eyes getting up and dusting herself of before turning sharply and starting down the hillside.

"Great, dead, naked, stuck with Boober, and I traded in a perfectly good tail for two pieces of fancy living spiderfly web."

"Red, where are you going?" Boober shouted in the distance.

"Where does it look like I'm going?!" Red shot back, making a point of starting to take even longer decided strides in the direction of the strange forest.

"Red? Red? Don't leave me here all alone! Who knows what likes to _eat_ whatever we are! Red, wait for me!"

The small form of a dark green elf like creature could be seen by the many unseen eyes of the wood, crying and shouting as he half ran, half tumbled down the slope of the red dirt hill…


End file.
